What You Missed at Inbound24

Last week, we were fortunate to attend HubSpot's annual marketing and sales event, Inbound24, in beautiful Boston!

Over three days, we learned what's trending in marketing so we could bring you helpful tips, tricks, and advice to apply to your business.

So, what are the key takeaways?

1. The Increasing Role of AI in Marketing and Sales

We know you're probably tired of hearing about AI, and you probably already know it can help your business get tasks done faster. But what we really loved hearing at Inbound was how to take AI to the next level.

Many businesses use AI to create blogs, website copy, and content. And that's great. But that's only scratching the surface. What about taking your blog and turning it into a podcast script or several social media posts? What about taking the information from customer-submitted forms to create highly customized emails that really resonate with them? Or taking your marketing data and asking AI to evaluate what you could and should be doing differently? These are all things that AI is really good at doing and can help you improve your business!

And for sales, AI is providing next-level lead scoring by taking your buyer personas and choosing the best, most qualified leads for your sales reps to follow up on. It can even help you better research the company and automate personalized messages.

This is more than just asking AI to write a social media post about your product. This integrates it into an automated agent that links AI models and has it do the work seamlessly for you.

Of course, HubSpot touted its newest Breeze function, which helps you do all of this. But we're not here to sell you on that (even though we love it).

Our tip: Spend some time furthering your AI knowledge. Try giving it more info and using AI agents to automate everyday tasks.

2. Changing Dynamics of Customer Engagement

Now, let's move from AI to the human element. As equally as AI was discussed at Inbound, so was incorporating the human element and reducing the use of AI. Confused? Don't be. AI has its place. It is an incredible tool that is necessary in today's business world. But we can't forget about human connection.

AI has created a lot of generic garbage. While it's a bit of a slower process, having more human involvement in your content, outreach, and overall experience is helping businesses stand out from the crowd. From emotional storytelling to meaningful interactions, the human touch can't be replaced.

Additionally, search engines are getting better at detecting AI when it comes to content, which means those involving more humans in the process will stand out in searches. AI will give you a lot of content, but it often doesn't have unique perspectives. That's where humans come in. It's about balancing AI and the human element to increase efficiency without losing that special touch.

Our tip: Utilize AI for ideas, change content you have into different formats, and better personalize your emails. But make sure you have humans adding the emotion, connection, and story to every piece of content!

3. The Evolution of Content Strategy

More than 4.6 billion pieces of content are produced every single day. How the hell are you supposed to stand out in all that noise?

With algorithms that stop showing your content because it didn't get enough engagement (that seems ass-backward if you ask us) and a turn toward more video content that takes up more time and resources, getting a piece of the digital pie is more difficult than ever!

But it doesn't have to be so overwhelming. We are encouraged to see that lo-fi content (not overly produced content) is much more popular, making it easier to create quick posts and updates. In fact, on Instagram. lo-fi content has received 64% more likes and comments; on LinkedIn, it has seen 72% more likes and comments in the last 12 months. This all goes back to that human element. In a world of AI-created content, people want to interact with people!

Our tip: Focus your time on really understanding and listening to your customer base and put out bite-sized content that is engaging and sharable. A quick video of you answering a question or a photo of your team having lunch are great ways to connect better!